Brian De Palma is in top form with Blow Out, one of the films in his
'Hitchcock' phase that continues to age well, yet retaining the sleazy and
gritty 1980s feel of macabre crime-thrillers.

Expertly shot with the Steadicam, award-winning
cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Deliverance,
1972; Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
1977) and De Palma bring to the table a visual palette that gives us striking
images of horror, suspense and intrigue as we (together with John Travolta who
plays Jack Terry) attempt to unravel the mystery of a suspected political
assassination.

Jack is a sound recordist for
exploitative B-movies, but when he is out one night to record sounds of nature,
his recorder also captured the sounds of a car tyre blowing out and the car
crashing into the river. The dead man is
a candidate for presidency, but Sally, the woman whom Jack saved from drowning
has no relations with the deceased.

Together, though with some
reluctance on Sally’s part, they seek to get to the bottom of the
conspiracy. Jack believes he has the
evidence to prove that it was no mere accident, but someone is out to silence
him.

Nancy Allen, who plays Sally, enjoys
an easy-going chemistry with Travolta, both giving decent performances. But what makes Blow Out such an entertaining film is De Palma’s tight screenplay
and a sense of rhythmic pacing.

In one of the film’s most memorable
sequences, Jack tries to piece together shot-by-shot photo cutouts of the
accident (apparently taken by an eyewitness videographer) with the sound
recording, so that when it runs through the projector, the piece looks like a
short scene from a film.

De Palma’s situating of the
technique and art of moviemaking as a running thread throughout the film is
clever and satisfying. Its opening
sequence, a no-frills homage to Psycho (1960)
and Halloween(1978), and maybe even
his own Carrie (1976), is sensational
if misdirecting. But the film’s final
scene takes the cake – it is morbidly cheeky, even devilish.

Like Coppola’s The Conversation(1974), Blow
Out works at a similar level in its commentary on surveillance,
conspiracies and irrational fears. In
some way, I see Blow Out as one of De
Palma’s more political films, even if he hides it very well in thick sheep’s
clothing.

Verdict:
You gotta love De Palma – Blow Out
is a twisted and suspenseful mystery, and also a clever if devilish testament
to the art of moviemaking.